Monday, January 26, 2015

The Car Windshield Is Turning Into a Computer Screen - Businessweek

Heads-up display technology poised to go mainstream

"Automakers have been adding a flood of information designed to keep drivers safe—some requested by customers, others mandated by governments—but it risks having the opposite effect. As weird as it sounds, projecting text and graphics onto the windshield may be less distracting to drivers than forcing them to look down at cluttered in-car screens—or worse, their mobile phones. A HUD, which sits within the driver's line of sight, would be free of "check engine" and "change oil" lights, and only display the alerts a driver might need at any given moment. Hyundai, Toyota, and General Motors expect the HUD to go mainstream very soon.

"It's about keeping the driver's eye on the road," says Carson Grover, a product planner at Hyundai Motor America. "For a long time, we thought a HUD was kind of a gimmick. Now we see this as a technology that's going to get more important over time.""